When terrorists killed 3,000 people on 9/11, they blamed the United States. When the Boxer Day tsunami took more than a hundred thousand lives, they blamed the United States. When Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, they blamed the United States. Stock answers are correct with about the same frequency as a broken clock. Events don't conform to ideological scripts. America has the right enemies.

President Bush yesterday commemorated the formal Japanese surrender on board the USS Missouri sixty years ago by delivering a speech in which he compared World War II with the Iraq war. "As we mark this anniversary," the president declared, "we are again a nation at war. Once again, war came to our shores with a surprise attack that killed thousands in cold blood." He subsequently referenced Iraq more than a dozen times.

Iraq is not Vietnam, as too many war opponents contend. More than 25 times as many Americans died in Vietnam as have died in Iraq. The enemy, the terrain, the tactics, and so much more differs.

Iraq is also not World War II. Had Franklin Roosevelt attacked China after Pearl Harbor, as Bush attacked Iraq 18 months after 9/11, then the comparison would hold. But since Japan attacked the American Navy, and Germany declared war on the United States, the comparison with Iraq does not hold--as Iraq neither attacked the United States nor declared war upon it. Similarly, Bush juxtaposed Japan's reconstruction with Iraq's reconstruction. "American and Japanese experts claimed that the Japanese weren't ready for democracy," he told those gathered in San Diego, who presumably were to fill in the blank with "Hey, people are saying the same thing about Iraq!" The difference is that Japan and Germany had some experience with self-government; Iraq has no such history. Other glaring differences emerge from such an ahistorical comparison, such as America's lack of allies in Iraq vis-a-vis our World War II experience. Ninety percent of the coalition war dead, for instance, are Americans.

Generals, the thought goes, foolishly prepare to fight the last war. War's proponents and opponents are far more guilty of this offense, rhetorically fighting their adversaries by appealing to the glories or horrors of distant conflicts regardless of their relevance to the present one.

Every so often men are reminded that they are not the most powerful force in the universe. Hurricane Katrina is one such reminder. The property damage stands in the tens of billions. New Orleans appears as a lake. Hundreds lay dead. Men were equipped to predict this, but not to stop it. In the man-centered universe, the boogeymen are terrorism, nuclear war, man-made global warming, unemployment, and other human-created and human-solved problems. In the real universe, these problems are eclipsed by disease, aging, tsunamis, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, blizzards, floods, droughts, and other naturally occuring phenomena. Man is neither responsible for all of the globe's calamities, nor is he capable of making them disappear.

The submitted draft of the Iraqi constitution is better than earlier drafts. Still, it contains much that disturbs Western eyes. "Islam is the official religion of the state and is a basic source of legislation," reads the draft Iraqi Constitution. "No law can be passed that contradicts the undisputed rules of Islam."

The constution gives all Iraqis accused of crime the right to a trial, but by the judiciary and not by a jury. Article 30 "guarantees social and health insurance." Article 34 proclaims: "Free education is a right for Iraqis in all its stages." The freedom from the federal government outlined in the American First Amendment are guaranteed, "as long as it does not violate public order and morality." The documents even points to a state "childrearing policy."

Despite the nit-picking, and the more substantial criticisms, the constitution improves upon what existed. Its most controversial plank, establishing federalism to foster self-government within the diverse localities, may prove the most important plank if this Iraqi government survives. But will any of this matter? Totalitarian governments made genuflections to high-minded principles in their constitutions, but rarely obeyed these power-limiting dictates. Even the governments of free nations regularly ignore facets of their constitutions that prove inconvenient. "On paper, many Arab states have liberal constitutions," writes Ivan Eland of the Independent Institute, "but they do not have the political culture or institutions to sustain an open political system." In other words, the fuss about the Iraqi constitution might be much ado about nothing. If the Iraqi government doesn't abide by the limitations its constitution demands of it, the constitution won't be worth the paper it is printed on. Whether the lofty promises made by the constitution already render the document of less worth than the paper it is printed on is another question.

It is unreasonable to reason with unreasonable people. Australia's leaders understand this. I wish they could make other Western leaders understand this. "You won't change the minds of people who are hardened fanatics and hardened extremists," Prime Minister John Howard explained last week. "You have to identify them and take measures to ensure that they don't become a problem." Those measures include, in extreme circumstances, deportation. The treasury minister echoed his boss. "If [Australian values] are not your values, if you want a country which has Sharia law or a theocratic state, then Australia is not for you." Ditto for the education minister, who suggested that Muslim radicals "clear off." Tolerance need not be a suicide pact.

A forthcoming article in the Georgetown Law Journal Law reports that an overwhelming percentage of law professors at top schools donate to Democrats. The study of professors at US News and World Report's 21 top-ranked law schools found 81 percent of law school donors giving to the Democrats, with just 15 percent giving to the Republicans. At the elite of the elite, Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, the imbalance was even greater. "Academics tend to be more to the left side of the continuum," Northwestern Law Dean David E. Van Zandt explained to the New York Times in reaction to the study. "It's a little worse in law school. In other disciplines, there are more objective standards for quality of work. Law schools are sort of organized in a club structure, where current members of the club pick future members of the club." Earlier this year, I conducted a study for the Leadership Institute called Deep Blue Campuses, which found employee donations to the 2004 presidential candidates favoring John Kerry over George W. Bush by $302 to $1 at Princeton, $32 to $1 at Penn, and $15 to $1 at Georgetown. How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for "diversity" from the drivers of conformity?

I filled up for the first time in a month Sunday night. Quite a shocking experience it was. The sight of the posted price even prompted a rare (I assure you) expletive-deleted type response. Holy something or other, I believe. Forgive me, but I've been away and my new morning commute stretches from my bedroom to my living room. I don't get to the gas station much anymore. This is probably why in listing reasons for the president's unpopularity, I overlooked this glaring, and perhaps primary, cause.

At the DC service station where I filled up, gas costs $2.88 per gallon--for the cheap stuff. Nationwide, the average cost is less expensive: $2.61. When I left for my trip, the average price per gallon stood at $2.36. A year ago, prices were on the wrong side of a $1.80. Notice a trend?

Hawaii, home to the costliest gas ($2.86 per gallon) in all fifty states, will institute price controls later this week on gasoline sold wholesale. Such drastic measures haven't been in effect in the U.S. in nearly a quarter century, when they led to long lines, shortages, and other maladies. The fiftieth state is the first state in gasoline taxes, which make up 53.5 cents of the price of every gallon sold. Strangely, or maybe not so strangely, state office holders didn't explore gas tax reductions as an option to lessen the burden on Hawaiians.

Price controls? Middle East problems? Skyrocketing gas prices? Those who refuse to remember the 1970s comdemn the rest of us to repeat them.

George W. Bush is likeable, but Americans don't like him--at least as their president. Just 40 percent of respondents to a Gallup poll approve of the president's job performance. Perhaps more would approve of him as their golf buddy or their local sportscaster. Bush owns the lowest approval rating of his presidency. He is out of step with the American people on Iraq, on immigration, and, unfortunately, on social security reform, a worthy endeavor that he failed to adequately sell. His failures on these issues, joined with the White House's smugness in the wake of Karl Rove's outing as Valerie Plame's "outer," explain his numbers decline. Other than Richard Nixon, W stands as the least popular two-term president at this stage of his second term since Gallup began asking such questions in the 1940s. Nearly four years ago, 90 percent of Americans approved of the job George W. Bush was doing as president. Today, that number is less than half that. Since the president can't get a new public, he might want to get some new policies--and perhaps some new political advisors guiding him on how to market those policies.

My favorite beer is Labatt's Blue. What's yours? Actually, I don't care what your favorite beer is. That's boring, so don't tell me. I ESP'd with the readers, and they don't care either. There are no stories behind the best beer you've ever had. Here's the question that really interests us: What's the worst beer you've ever tried? For me, it's MeisterBrau. It's Friday. You're rummaging in your car seats looking for change to buy a twelve pack. What's the beer you wouldn't drink even if it were offered free?

Pat Robertson's has apologized for his unsolicited counsel to President Bush that he assassinate Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez, so just about everyone is in agreement, including apparently Robertson, that his televised remarks were stupid. But were they stupid simply because Chavez is a world leader supposedly immune from such indignities, or were they stupid because Chavez neither poses a direct threat to the U.S. nor oppresses his people in the manner of a Saddam Hussein or a Kim Jong Il? These last two dictators, Roberton also advocated killing, along with Osama bin Laden. Several years ago, Robertson asked: "Isn't it better to...take out Saddam Hussein, rather than to spend billions of dollars on a war that harms innocent civilians and destroys the infrastructure of a country?" Well, isn't it? Claus von Stauffenberg is a hero, not a terrorist. Right?

If one concedes that Hitler's would-be assassins' actions were heroic, then one can't logically dismiss out-of-hand the general idea that assassination is on very rare occassions a moral and beneficial act.

War and assassination, though, aren't the only two options available to U.S. presidents. The U.S. could stay out of the affairs of foreign nations that don't threaten its just interests. But if war--and the death, destruction, and financial waste that always accompanies it--is the primary option on the table, then isn't, we'll call it "the Robertson option," a more humane choice? In other words, why kill tens of thousands of hostile soldiers and innocent civilians, risk the lives of your fellow countrymen, destroy a nation's infrastructure, and waste billions of dollars when you could alleviate the problem with the cost of one bullet at the price of one tyrant's life? If killing dictators who murder their fellow countrymen and threaten their neighbors is wrong, why is killing foreign soldiers and civilians to depose such dictators right? Those who view the lives of reigning murderers as sacrosanct and the lives of innocents as expendable have things bassackwards.

Or, is assassination like torture--a practice that once used in understandable circumstances sanctions its use in all sorts of circumstances? Its use in U.S. interests condones its use against U.S. interests. In this view, assassination can be moral but not utilitarian. And while assassinating Hitler would have saved countless lives, in most instances assassinating a despot just leads to his replacement by another despot. Perhaps assassination is too simple a solution for a complex world.

Pat Robertson's specific advice to kill Hugo Chavez deserved the quick dismissal it received from the public, the media, and the politicians. The more generalized discussion regarding assassination evokes serious ethical questions, deserving of more serious debate than they are receiving.

A fat woman filed a complaint with the New Hampshire Board of Medicine because her doctor told her that she was fat and needed to change her lifestyle. The board then forwarded the matter to the New Hampshire attorney general's Administrative Prosecution Unit, which determined that the doctor should admit wrongdoing and attend a medical education class. The doctor balked. "I've made many errors in my lifetime," Dr. Terry Bennett explains. "Telling someone the truth is not one of them." Is this the government's business? If Bennett offended his patient, then she could have sought any number of other doctors. It is doubtful that any of them would tell her that a diet of Ho-Hos, Mountain Dew, and Doritos is good for you, no matter how good that lie would make her feel. The doctor who dispenses such advice is the doctor who the New Hampshire Board of Medicine should look into.

University of Alabama Professor Michael J. New writes an excellent article on how the media, particularly the New York Times, parse abortion statistics. He notes that the Times and other outlets referenced dubious statistics claiming an increase in abortions during the George W. Bush presidency, but have not referenced the statistics of the Alan Guttmacher Institute (an arm of Planned Parenthood) detailing a decrease in abortions during the first two years of the Bush Administration. "Interestingly," New observes, "the only occasions where the Times referenced declining abortion figures were during sympathetic articles about the approval of RU-486 and the increased amenities that abortion clinics were offering to increase business." It's with Professor New's point in mind that I view with skepticism the highly-touted report by an abortion clinic administrator and several University of California-San Francisco researchers that fetuses don't feel pain until the final months of pregnancy. I don't have a scientific background akin to this report's authors, but I could just as easily issue my own study refuting the UCSF study. It would involve me pinching a prematurely-born baby and watching the infant respond. I could do this in the name of advancing human discovery, but I'm not a sadist so I'll leave it to some other enterprising man of science who has no such qualms about making babies cry.

David Gessner has an interesting essay on the word "gusto," specifically how its use by Schlitz in '60s-era advertising campaigns devalued it. Unlike "intensity," Gessner writes, "gusto is undeniably round and unforgivably bouncy." But then Schlitz came along and took the gusto out of gusto, making it a mere euphemism for mass-produced beer. "Grab for all the gusto you can get," their ads told beer drinkers. Many grabbed for too much gusto, and the word, like the drinkers, decayed.

But so did the beer. Schlitz's demise is far more interesting than the demise of the word associated with it and far less predictable than the demise of the drinkers devoted to it. Just a few decades ago, Schlitz was America's number one beer. Tell someone under thirty this and they will laugh at you. Schlitz is now considered a beer that even cash-strapped college students wouldn't drink, somewhere beneath Natural Light and above Keystone on the beer chain. But Schlitz actually doesn't taste bad. It just suffers from a poor reputation. But why? Schlitz is a traditional, working-class beer, and its old, rip-top cans were about the coolest thing going. Along with Bud, Schlitz was the first beer I illegally purchased; I don't remember much of a stigma to it then (although as the buyer I tellingly laid claim to a share of the Bud case). But even in the late 1980s Schlitz was well on the path away from the respectable neighborhood of Bud, Coors, and Michelob and toward the alcoholic ghetto of Schaefer, Black Label, and Meisterbrau--beers drunk only by urchins who lurk outside of package stores to make beer runs for the underage (and perhaps to scoop up used scratch tickets in hopes of finding an overlooked winner).

What happened? A workers' strike in the 1950s hurt Schlitz's market share, but it wasn't fatal. Indeed, the company rebounded to joust with Anheuser-Busch over beer supremacy. The death blow was self-inflicted, coming in the late 1960s. It was called accelerated batch fermentation. This "advance" cut costs, sped up the brewing process, and allowed the production of a higher volume of beer. It also, crucually, changed the taste of a familiar product. In effect, Schlitz was no longer Schlitz. Rumors persist of longtime Schlitz drinkers vomiting upon the new beer making contact with the stomach. Who knows if that's true; what's undeniable is the public revolt against the alteration. The bottom fell out on Schlitz's market share. Other indignities, including federal indictments, a strike, and the public relations nightmare of having to dump ten million bottles and cans of "bad" Schlitzes, compounded the company's problems. Finally, in 1981, "the beer that made Milwaukee famous," closed its Milwaukee plant. A year later, Strohs bought Schlitz. Today, Pabst owns it.

Less than one percent--about twenty beers--of American breweries in operation in 1900 brew today. A century or so ago, Pabst was America's number one beer. A half century ago, Schlitz was America's number one beer. Twenty-five years ago, Budweiser reigned as king of beers. Today, Bud Light holds the crown. Tomorrow it will certainly be some other beer. For as the history of Schlitz shows us, the mighty do fall.

Bill Clinton has been keeping a low profile. Do you share the suspicions that he has reenrolled himself as a student at this Canton, Ohio high school?

Televangelist Pat Robertson believes U.S. operatives should ace Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. Should they? Are there situations that warrant politically-ordered assassinations? Does this situation fit the bill? Do other governments retain the right to similarly act on their moral judgments? Or, is killing world leaders the prerogative of one nation's leaders?

The USS Iowa has served in more wars than any active duty service member, but it is not welcome in San Francisco. Voting eight to three, the city council refused to let the ship dock in San Francisco's famous bay. The historic vessel sailed south to Stockton. City Supervisor Ross Mirkarimi commented, "If I was going to commit any kind of money in recognition of war, then it should be toward peace, given what our war is in Iraq right now." In addition to opposition to the Iraq war, city supervisors cited the military's refusal to allow open homosexuals to serve as rationales for blocking the USS Iowa from setting down anchor in San Francisco.

The line drawn in Why the Left Hates America between leftists and liberals is highlighted by this controversy. Even Dianne Feinstein, a former San Francisco supervisor and mayor, labels the denial of safe harbor for the decommissioned USS Iowa "petty." And petty is what it is. While the supervisors can note their support of uncloseted gays in the military or their opposition to the Iraq war, neither of these things has any relevance to blocking the public display of the World War II-era icon.

Stones. Fenway. Tour. Opening night. I was there. You weren't.

FlynnFiles returned to the United States with an exclamation point Sunday night. I caught the opening night of the Rolling Stones's tour at Fenway Park on August 21. The ghosts of Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, and Tony Conigliero watched with me.

Sans ticket, I approached Fenway with the intent of making an exchange after the Stones began. Shortly after "Start Me Up," with a wannabe scalper in a panic, I offered face value ($120) for a ticket. He agreed, and I saw the concert without making a major ATM withdrawal.

New songs "Infamy" (a Keith Richards number) and "Out of Control" reminded audience members that they weren't witnessing a purely greatest-hits show. "Heartbreaker," "Brown Sugar," and "She's So Cold," which Mick Jaggar noted that the Stones had rarely played live, brought the Mecca of Baseball to its knees. Other highlights included the '70s disco track, "Miss You," and the later-Stones song, "You Got Me Rocking"--both of which sound better live than the studio versions. Mick Jaggar praised Arnold Schwarzenegger, who held a fundraiser at the event, and Keith Richards made some incomprehensible mumblings. The smell of marijuana, and the look of middle age, was in the air.

The tour's stage set-up is unrivaled. With Mick Jaggar covering a distance greater than from Manny Ramirez to Trot Nixon, the Stones's stage at times approached the infield and reached higher than the Green Monster. The background appears as a massive hotel, with concert-goers populating two floors of the backdrop. A giant, inflatable, Rolling Stones mouth closed the pre-encore concert. While ownership refused to sell tickets for the infield, bleachers, and Green-Monster seats, every other space within the city box remained occupied. At expense, and look, the stage's set is like nothing else at any rock show.

The Rolling Stones are a travelling party, and closing with "It's Only Rock n Roll" amidst 40,000 fellow party-goers while letting off a fireworks display, seems about as appropriate an encore as it gets. Get invited when the party comes to your town.

I blog from England, which is even more politically correct than the United States. Tony Blair's common-sense proposal to eject radical clerics preaching violence against the United Kingdom has been met with hysteria. "I see similarities with Hitler," says Mohammed Naseem of Tony Blair. Sheikh Muhammad Umar opines: "The solution is not to ban these organisations, it is to engage with them. What Tony Blair need to do is he needs to do more casework. We need to have dialogue with these groups, not alienate them." Meanwhile, the national media, which is well left of the American media, is in an uproar over police on the lookout for men who fit the profile of the 7/7 bombers and the 7/21 wannabe bombers. One young male South Asian reporter walked about the London Underground with a hidden camera while wearing an overstuffed backpack. With an indignant tone, he showed viewers how police stopped him three times. One man's outrage is another man's good police work. On the television, one would never know such a thing as "England" exists, as "Britain" and other more inclusive labels have replaced it. So sensitive to offending Muslims are the authorities that Greater Manchester officials banned a newlywed couple from playing Robbie Williams's "Angels" after their civil marriage ceremony. Along with Bryan Adams's "Heaven" and Aretha Franklin's "I Say a Little Prayer," "Angels" risked offending non-Christians. When should we expect a crescent to join St. George's Cross on the Union Jack?

Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of my interview with Howard Phillips are now online. The Conservative Caucus chairman discusses Republican misses on the Supreme Court, the state of the conservative movement, the sharp left turn of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, pulling Fidel Castro's beard, the George W. Bush presidency, schooldays at Boston Latin and Harvard, and much, much more. Read the entire can't-miss interview with this principled conservative here.

I blog from Poland, where 25 years ago Solidarity began its mission of workers overthrowing an alleged workers' state. Specifically, I blog from Wroclaw, where I visited the Wroclaw Museum of History's exhibition on the Stasi, the infamous secret police of East Germany. Located in western Poland, Wroclaw (pronounced Vrotswaf) had long been a German-ruled city prior to its rule by the Communists after World War II, so the appeal of a museum exhibit focusing on the Big Brother of the GDR makes sense for this German-Polish crossroads. Standing out was a display on the risks GDR citizen-inmates took in attempting to escape their prison-state. Methods of departure included submarines, boats, a mad-dash followed by a bullet-evading Berlin Wall climb, and, in the case of an East German woman, a train ride hidden in her French fiancee's luggage.

In Krakow, I took in a tour of Nowa Huta, a model Communist community that now more closely resembles an elaborate Western housing project. Launched in the postwar era to house employees of the Lenin Steelworks, the planned city based on principles of Socialist Realism boasted tens-of-thousands of inhabitants. The modern, Communist Nowa Huta was supposed to eclipse its sister city, the medieval, Catholic Krakow. Nowa Huta was a self-contained city outside a city, complete with schools, restuarants, playgrounds, theatres, and stores to accompany the many apartment buildings, which each housed 3,000 to 4,000 people. The street planning made transit remarkably simple. Work, play, everything the people wanted was here--at least that's how it was supposed to work. The people wanted something the Communists refused to give them--a church. Led by Krakow's bishop Karol Wojtyla, the steelworkers demanded a house of worship. More than a quarter century after conscripted Poles broke ground on Nowa Huta, its inhabitants finally got their church. A year later, the man who led that fight, became pope.

Instead of eclipsing Krakow, Nowa Huta has been absorbed by it. It's part of Krakow now, albeit a much forgotten, rarely visited part. The soot-covered buildings face renovations and colorful paint jobs. The giant, centerpiece statue of a walking Lenin is gone, sold to Swedes who have put it on display as a novelty. It's probably for the best, as the metallic Lenin would not have liked what he saw in today's Nowa Huta. Lenin Square has been renamed Ronald Reagan Square. The Lenin Steelworks have been renamed too. There is a boulevard named for John Paul II.

In Prague, the Museum of Communism announces, "We're Above McDonalds, Across from Bennetton." Containing such curiosities as a factory poster explaining, "Timely Arrival to Work Deals the Decisive Strike Against the American Aggressors," and Communist literature blaming local crop failures on US biological warfare (a potato bug of American sabateurs), the museum takes sides: against lies and for truth, against communism and for freedom. Like the East German Stasi, Czechoslovakian soldiers kept in locals by force. Border guards were awarded bonuses, such as wrist watches and extra leave, for shooting their fleeing fellow countrymen. Most interesting in this city of ancient structures was the museum's exhibit on the Communists' attempt to contribute to the local landmarks. In 1950, the state embarked on a stone statue of Stalin, measuring some 30 meters in height. Other local construction projects stopped for years, as efforts focused on the massive Stalin monument. Work was completed in 1955, but by then Stalin was dead--and soon to be out of fashion after Krushchev denounced him in 1956. So, by the early 1960s, the enormous, 17,000-ton Stalin, like so many others living under Communism, simply disappeared.

Within three decades, Communism would disappear--in Wroclaw, in Prague, in Krakow, in Bucharest, in Dresden, in Budapest, and a thousand European points beyond. "We are more than a political party," Bohumir Smeral, founder of the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia, remarked long ago. "We are the vanguard of the new life. We create new relations, we want to create a new people." But the old people got in the way. And if it were not for the meddlesome human beings, Communism, which had never failed in its theorists' imaginations, would have succeeded wildly.

It's a sad day for conservatives when their conscience on big-government spending is the Washington Post.

Japan announced its World War II surrender 60 years ago today. That date marks the height of America's power relative to the rest of the world. The US had defeated its enemies. The war left previous world powers, Germany and the United Kingdom, in shambles. The US alone had the bomb. The US GDP eclipsed the GDPs of the USSR, the UK, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, and Austria combined. Even more than upon the Soviet Union's collapse, or on 9/10, or today--when the US is commonly referred to as the world's lone superpower--recent American power can't compare to the power it held on August 15, 1945. Though US power has grown in absolute terms, it has unquestionably and inevitably declined in relative terms. Perhaps less significant than the power was how America used it (If not an American Century, consider the alternatives: The Nazi Century? The Soviet Century? The Century of British Empire?). The US rebuilt rather than gouged its enemies. The American Century that Henry Luce proclaimed on February 7, 1941 never rang so true than on the day Japan surrendered.

I blog from Krakow, site of the bishopric of Karol Wojtyla prior to his elevation to the papacy. Walking the streets of Krakow one glimpses European peculiarities: nuns in habits and collared priests, religious books in store windows, pictures of the old and new popes, and overflowing churches. I celebrated mass at one of these overflowing churches today--and found myself with neither pew nor kneeler.

Krakow once stood in the heart of Christendom. Krakow now stands as an outpost of Christendom, and it never moved--the world around it did. The term Europe was once synonymous with Christendom. Even something as basic as the national flags--check out the (ironic) flags of any Scandinavian nation-- of Europe bear this out. Now Europe is at best indifferent and at worst hostile to the faith that provided its identity. The European Union's proposed constitution even refused to mention the continent's longtime uniting characteristic: Christianity.

With more than half of its people attending church at least once per week, Poland is one of the world's most devoutly Catholic nations. By way of comparison, regular churchgoers in neighboring Belarus (6 percent) and Czech Republic (14 percent) constitute a tiny fragment of the population. Five years ago, I went to mass in Prague in an architecturally stunning church that resembles many of the churches of Krakow. The similarities stopped there: in the Czech Republic, a handful of pensioners attended mass in the near-empty church; in Poland, people of all ages packed the church on a Saturday.

Catholicism is a resilient faith. In Poland, it endured the attacks of the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the murderous ideologies of that bloodiest of centuries. Catholic Poles have lived under Romanovs, Hapsburgs, Nazis, Communists, and other lords temporal. Throughout, their lord spiritual has remained unchanged.

In the former Communist-governed nations that I'm traveling through, citizens immolated themselves to protest freedoms denied. In the current sheikhdoms and mulluhcracies that I don't plan on traveling to anytime soon, citizens immolate themselves--and quite a few others--because, according to George W. Bush, "They hate our freedoms." You don't need to light yourself on fire to get your voice heard on FlynnFiles. And you can't light others on fire just because you don't like what they have to say. Just say whatever you want in the comments section below. No petrol required. It's open-thread Friday.

Howard Phillips remembers love of country instilled in 1950s America, the sharp left turn of the Massachusetts Democratic Party, attempting to coax Pat Buchanan to run on the Constitution Party ticket, and school days at two of America's elite schools (Boston Latin and Harvard University) in the final installment of this four-part FlynnFiles interview.

Controversy engulfs the Rolling Stones in the work-up to A Bigger Bang (buy it here), their first album of new material since 1997's Bridges to Babylon. The Stones have been on top for more than four decades, and as the buzz surrounding their new album demonstrates, this has nearly as much to do with mastering publicity as it does with mastering guitar riffs.

Last week, press chatter-boxes reported with amusement that the London police had in 1969 termed Mick Jaggar's friends the "dregs of society." In mocking this assessment these gadflies mock themselves. Mick Jaggar is the singer for the Rolling Stones, isn't he? One need only look at the four ugly dudes he shared the stage with--they weren't the Beatles, after all--to endorse the police's judgment. Brian Jones, the band's founder, never reached the age of 30 yet still managed to spawn five illegitimate children. Keith Richards's abuse of heroin, cocaine, and various other substances too numerous and obscure to name resulted in police busts and a conversational style that at times makes Ozzy Osbourne sound like Tony Blair. A fiftysomething Bill Wyman, who played bass for the Stones, married his sweetheart in 1989, five years after they started dating--when she was thirteen. Charlie Watts has never, to my knowledge, been guilty of any great public malfeasance. But his guilty face leads me to believe he's just better than his dregs-of-society bandmates at not getting caught.

This week, controversy erupted over the lyrics of the yet-to-be released Stones track, Sweet Neo Con, which targets the Bush Administration. Jaggar sings: "You call yourself a Christian, I call you a hypocrite/You call yourself a patriot. Well, I think your are full of s---!... How come you're so wrong, my sweet neo-con." Unlike REM and Jackson Browne, the Stones have never been so preachy as to negate the political pronouncements they do make. They also have a much larger soapbox. The Stones have put out some political songs--Street Fighting Man, Sweet Black Angel, Highwire--but they've never been a political band. This works in their favor. When Yoko Ono talks, people wish they were deaf. When the Stones talk, people listen.

So, should the Stones just shut up and sing, or should their critics just shut up and let the Stones sing?

Which conservatives influenced Howard Phillips? What was Howard Phillips's relationship to Harvard classmate Barney Frank? What world leader's beard did Howard Phillips pull upon his visit to Harvard? These questions and more answered in part three of this four-part FlynnFiles interview.

I blog from Prague, where the beer is good and the architecture better. I just took in a photographic exhibit, "Forgotten Prague," which detailed the lost architecture of the city. Prague seems to have done a better job than most cities in preserving ancient strcutures--a 750-year-old bridge, a 1200-year-old castle, a 650-year-old church all blend into the surroundings. But, as "Forgotten Prague" demonstrates, too much has been lost. We just don't notice because we never knew it was there in the first place.

Three forces have destroyed beautiful architecture throughout Europe: war, weather, and socialism. Prague thankfully avoided the aerial bombardment that destroyed the charm of many European cities during World War II. It has not, unfortunately, eluded weather or socialism. In the 19th century, for instance, floods swept away much of Charles Bridge. Czechs mindful of history restored the span, which now stands as a footbridge. During the 19th and 20th centuries, state planners bent on urban renewal succeeded in urban destruction. Save for five synagogues, virtually nothing remains from Prague's Jewish Quarter. Nazis murdered many of the inhabitants; city planners had earlier obliterated their old and beautiful dwellings, commercial buildings, and meeting spaces. Vienna and Budapest suffered similar indignities at the hands of modern do-gooders. In the case of the former, a 19th-century socialist mayor razed the entire center of the city; in the case of the latter, the utilitarian architecture of the Communists uprooted structural links to the past. As an American visitor used to "old" meaning 100- or 200-years old, I am grateful for what remains.

Conservatives revere the past. Progressives despise it. The progressive gives no deference to history. He favors theory over experience. He imagines his ancestors as troglodytes incapable of moral or intellectual sophistication. He tells adversaries to "change with the times" and dismisses arguments with such put-downs as "medieval," "relic," "neanderthal," "backward," and "stone-age." He would bulldoze the pyramids for a shopping mall. Real progress is not destroying links to the past.

In part two of this four-part FlynnFiles interview, Howard Phillips outlines why every Republican president since Eisenhower has appointed a liberal to the Supreme Court, criticizes Beltway conservatives for rolling over when conservative office-holders betray conservative principles, and analyzes the successes and failures of the conservative movement.

Howard Phillips has been fighting for conservative principles for more than four decades, first within the Republican Party and then outside of it. In the first of this four-part FlynnFiles interview, Howard Phillips discusses the recent nomination of John Roberts to the Supreme Court and a half century of Republican presidents disappointing conservatives with their Supreme Court nominees.

I blog from Charing Cross Road, London, where I just visited Henry Pordes Books, Any Amount of Books, and Quinto. It was at this last shop where I made a transaction. I'm travelling light, so I had to be discriminating in my choices. This meant forgoing a cheap, hardback set of Karl Popper's Open Society and Its Enemies (which I have long coveted). I did purchase Richard Hofstadter's Anti-Intellectualism in American Life, a biography of early U.S. socialist Joseph Wedemeyer published by the infamous International Publishers, and Earl Browder's Marx and America: Why Communism Failed in America, which, as the title indicates, was written after Stalin ousted Browder from his longtime spot as leader of the CPUSA. In addition to my forays into the famous used bookshops of Charing Cross Road and Cecil Court, I glimpsed Big Ben, Westminster Abbey, and the London Eye. Passing through Sloane Square, Picadilly Circus, and Vauxhall is enough to make me feel as if I were in a Morissey song. I depart the land of Morissey, Monty Python, and soccer hooligans named Nigel later today, to return briefly next week.

I'm off to Europe. But FlynnFiles won't be taking a vacation. I recently spoke for more than an hour with Howard Phillips--veteran of the Nixon administration, founder of the Conservative Caucus, and three-time presidential candidate. Starting Monday, that interview will appear on FlynnFiles in four parts. When the opportunity arises, I'll post from far-off lands--provided the natives have access to the computer technology we enjoy here in the United States. Speaking of far-off lands, my travels bring me to London, Prague, Krakow, and Wroclaw. If you've been to any of these cities, and have suggestions about where to go, speak up in the comments section.

More than a decade ago, former Senator Fritz Hollings, angered by disparaging comments a Japanese official had made about American workers, got an idea for a t-shirt. "Made in America, Tested in Japan" the t-shirt would read. In the middle of the shirt, below the first phrase and above the second, would appear a mushroom cloud.

Sixty years ago today, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on the Japanese city of Hiroshima. The Enola Gay's 10,000-pound payload killed more than 80,000 Japanese civilians. The Japanese announced their surrender shortly thereafter.

Six decades later, the debate over Hiroshima rages. On the one hand, the United States government dropped an indiscriminant weapon of mass destruction on a civilian population. Do ethical principles change once war comes? Do the ends justify the means when the bad guys suffer the means? On the other hand, dropping the bomb saved lives, both American and Japanese. The Japanese surrender/survival rate at Iwo Jima and Tarawa was less than one percent. It took Hiroshima and Nagasaki to compel the Japanese to finally surrender.

You're Harry Truman. It's August 6, 1945. Do you drop the bomb?

I will be on C-SPAN today at 3 p.m. (EDT) moderating a panel on "Great Books to Read in College." I will be making about five minutes of opening remarks at 3 p.m., introducing the three panelists, and facilitating the question and answer period. The event is part of Young America's Foundation's National Conservative Student Conference.

Have you done any volunteer work for "gay rights" groups lately? No? Well, me neither. But John Roberts has. At least he did a decade ago, when he did pro bono legal work for groups seeking to overturn the will of the people of Colorado and grant homosexuals protected status under the law. They won, and John Roberts helped them. He didn't even bother to charge for services rendered. What were all those campaign promises about appointing Supreme Court justices in the tradition of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas?

Friday, I moderate a panel called "Great Books to Read in College" at the Young America's Foundation summer conference. Several big wheels of the conservative publishing industry will serve as panelists: Marjory Ross of Regnery, Mitch Muncy of Spence, and Adam Bellow of Random House.

College-aged conservatives read twice as much as their liberal peers. First, they read what their professors assign them. Then, they read what contradicts what their professors assign them. The type of books young conservatives are reading has evolved since the early days of the conservative movement. Yes, what's between the covers is quite different. But the most interesting change is neither the titles on the dust jacket, nor the words it protects, but the corporate name on the lower part of the spine. Most conservatives would recognize the books and authors young conservatives were reading, say, four decades ago. Name their publishers and the response will be a vacant stare. Victor Publishing of Shepherdsville, Kentucky put out Barry’s Goldwater’s Conscience of a Conservative. Liberty Bell Press of Florissant, Missouri published John Stormer’s None Dare Call It Treason. Pere Marquette Press of Alton, Illinois published Phyllis Schlafly’s A Choice Not an Echo. None of these locales had been known (or are known now) as publishing industry Meccas, but each was the site of publication for a million-plus seller.

More substantial works fared better, but not by much. Witness (buy it here), the ninth bestselling nonfiction book of 1953, became a selection of the Book-of-the-Month Club, but only with an unusual disclaimer by the book club's editorial board. "The judges of the Book-of-the-Month Club have always recognized that a heavy responsibility rests upon them every time they select and offer a volume to many thousand subscribers. It is seldom, if ever, that they can unanimously endorse the entire contents of any book," John Marquand told club members. "This Editorial Board...cannot offer Witness to members without being frank about some reservations of its own." One publishing industry wag deemed Friedrich Hayek's Road to Serfdom (buy it here) "unfit for publication by a reputable house," and the book that went on to sell more than a quarter-million copies received several rejections before landing a publisher. Russell Kirk had better luck. Knopf agreed to publish what became The Conservative Mind (buy it here), but only if Kirk would cut the manuscript by half. He balked, found Henry Regnery, and the rest is history.

Today, conservative writers have more options. Conservative readers have more choices. But do they have better choices? The absence of a Kirk, a Hayek, a Chambers is noticeable. Most political books now read like elongated op-ed pieces. Google and lexis-nexis searches pass for real research. The writing style resembles punchy, direct-mail letters. This formula--complete with the obligatory posed author picture on the front cover--results in books brought down to the reader’s level rather than raising the reader up to the book's level. Conservative publishing has always offered candy for the masses. Publishing, after all, is a business--and who doesn't like a quick read. But the industry once balanced these offerings with meat and potatoes. Better still, if one read enough candy one would eventually be directed to the more substantial fare. Instead of the meat and potatoes, today's candy often leads the reader to more candy--the author's website, the author's talk-radio show, the author's other books produced in eight weeks or less. This is because few of the conservative popularizers have read the great conservative thinkers.

I've often wondered: if a Russell Kirk were to show up with today's Conservative Mind, would any of the conservative book publishers accept his manuscript? Perhaps I've been asking myself the wrong question: If a conservative book publisher today released a book akin to The Conservative Mind, would anyone read it? In other words, if the conservative books published today rank a few shelves below their antecedents, it might be because the readers of today rank a few shelves below their antecedents. But who are conservatives to complain? Until recently, the gripe has been that liberal guardians in the publishing industry have shielded book buyers from conservative books at the expense of their bottom line. To replace the demand for a more market-driven approach, with a new demand for conservative editors to select books that appeal to readers' intellect rather than publishers' bank accounts, risks reinstituting the old problem in order to abolish the new problem.

Look hard enough in your local bookstore and you'll find excellent books on foreign policy by Samuel Huntington, on economics by Thomas Sowell, and on history by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr. But does the young reader, who is the least discriminating of readers, discover these books amidst the clutter?

It's an exciting time to be a young conservative book writer. I'm not sure it's as exciting a time to be a young conservative book reader.

"'Chappelle's Show' is over, man. Done," explains Charlie Murphy, brother of Eddie and lackey of Dave. This would explain quite a bit, like why I've seen Chappelle's "racial draft" 400 times but not a single new bit in over a year. When it truly is all over, I've got a bad feeling that Charlie Murphy could put together a Charlie Murphy True Hollywood Story about Dave Chappelle that would make Rick James look like Donnie Osmond. Cocaine is a helluva drug.

Is it really fair when the New York Yankees take on the Tampa Bay Devil Rays? The Yankees field a team of all-stars making $205 million, while the D-Rays field a glorified AAA team making $38 million. Yet, the Devil Rays have won seven of ten against the Yankees this season. As the cliche goes, that's why games aren't decided on paper.

Let's momentarily abolish the geographic divisions of the American and National Leagues, and place Major League Baseball's thirty teams in divisions against their payroll peers. Does money make a difference? Yeah, it does...but not always. The top five highest payrolls--the MTV Cribs Division--all boast winning records. Four of the bottom five lowest payrolls--the Spare Change? Division--have losing records. Hail to the Indians, White Sox, and A's, who can't compete in the contracts department but can compete where it counts. Boo to the Mariners, Giants, and Dodgers, who can each field a team of millionaires but not a team of winners.

Forget the races in the National League East and the American League West. Who's going to win the moneyball divisions?

MTV Cribs
62-45 Los Angeles Angels ($95,017,822)
61-45 Boston Red Sox ($121,311,945)
56-49 New York Yankees ($205,938,439)
56-52 Philadelphia Phillies ($95,337,908)
54-53 New York Mets ($104,770,139)

Trump Tower
68-39 St. Louis Cardinals ($92,919,842)
62-46 Atlanta Braves ($85,148,582)
54-53 Chicago Cubs ($87,210,933)
46-60 Seattle Mariners ($85,883,334)
45-61 San Francisco Giants ($89,487,426)

Suburban Colonial
69-37 Chicago White Sox ($75,228,000)
59-48 Houston Astros ($76,779,022)
48-59 Los Angeles Dodgers ($81,029,500)
51-55 Detroit Tigers ($68,998,183)
51-56 Baltimore Orioles ($74,570,539)

Trailer Park
55-52 Minnesota Twins ($56,615,000)
54-51 Florida Marlins ($60,375,961)
52-55 San Diego Padres ($62,888,192)
52-57 Arizona Diamondbacks ($63,015,833)
48-59 Cincinnati Reds ($59,658,275)

The Projects
60-47 Oakland A's ($55,869,262)
57-50 Washington Nationals ($48,581,500)
55-51 Toronto Blue Jays ($45,038,500)
53-53 Texas Rangers ($53,891,258)
39-67 Colorado Rockies ($48,107,500)

Spare Change?
57-51 Cleveland Indians ($41,830,400)
53-55 Milwaukee Brewers ($40,234,833)
46-62 Pittsburgh Pirates ($38,133,000)
42-66 Tampa Bay Devil Rays ($37,975,067)
38-69 Kansas City Royals ($36,881,000)

Joan Collins gave a "wake up!" slap upside the head to fellow Brits Englishmen today, the likes of which we haven't seen since Alexis Carrington Colby belted Krystle Jennings. "I believe that when a country loses so much respect for itself that it can no longer even be identified by its historically correct name, insecurity and lack of respect filter down to its inhabitants," Collins wrote in Thursday's edition of the Daily Mail, deriding those who insist on erasing "English" for "British" and "England" for the "UK." Englishmen--not Muslims, not Asian street vendors, not Eurotrash--are destroying England from within. Pointing to bad manners, self-obsession, and "feral mobs" roaming the streets, Collins notes that the English aren't acting very English these days. "It's frightful how being told that you are no good makes you hate yourself, and hate others. And it's frightful how quickly a whole country of self-loathers can be bred."

The American Conservative's August 29 cover story, "How the Right Got Bigger & Dumber," is must reading--but for the offline reader only. Conservatives have made inroads at the major publishing houses, watch their own news network, dominate talk radio, boast several well-respected DC think-tanks, and regularly cast ballots for winning candidates. But has getting to the top come at the price of sinking to the bottom?

The piece's author, Austin Bramwell, asks: Where is today's Russell Kirk, Fredrich Hayek, or James Burnham? If they exist, we know neither their names nor their writings. The vibrant debates between, say, L. Brent Bozell II and Frank Meyer, have been replaced by mindless cheerleading. "Indeed, the more a right-winger exalts one set of ideas," Bramwell writes, "the more marginal he becomes; by contrast, the more foggy he remains about what the Holy Grail is, the more influence he can have."

The intellectual dormancy first appeared on the radar screens of many thoughtful conservatives in the 1990s, when Clinton-bashing passed for a unifying political philosophy. The inheritors of this unworthy, dumbed-down conservatism at present identify whatever talking points the Republican Party is issuing with conservative principle. Bramwell points out that "elitism, perhaps an electoral handicap, is an intellectual strength. Original thinking often flourishes under conditions of intellectual marginality. Unfortunately, the conservative movement, having discovered a mass audience, risks squandering the intellectual marginality that once made it interesting and daring."

"In future years," Bramwell concludes, "it may take a smaller, elite group of right-wingers to animate conservative ideas once more." Mr. Bramwell, meet Mr. Nock.

"No" has a proud tradition on the Right. "It is much more important to kill bad bills than to pass good ones," observed Calvin Coolidge. National Review "stands athwart history, yelling Stop," William F. Buckley wrote in the inaugural issue of that flagship publication of conservatism. "My aim is not to pass laws," explained Barry Goldwater, "but to repeal them." Echoing this theme, Ronald Reagan declared: "Government isn’t the solution. Government is the problem." "No" helped elect George H.W. Bush when many still believed him a Reaganite. "Read my lips. No new taxes." Liberals believed making this promise was his biggest mistake. Conservatives know breaking this promise was his biggest mistake. Reports of the death of "no" on the Right are greatly exaggerated. "No" still lives, albeit more quietly for the time being. Jonathan Rees, a candidate for DC City Council, has plastered my neighborhood with refreshing signs declaring: "AND I WILL VOTE NO," referring to hikes in business, property, income, and other taxes.

Unfortunately, "no" is a word that rarely passes through George W. Bush's lips. He said yes to No Child Left Behind, the Prescription Drug Plan, the Farm Bill, nationalization of airport security, campaign finance reform, the assault weapons ban, affirmative action, nation building, federal funds for embryonic stem-cell research, amnesty for illegal aliens, the airline bailout, massive deficit spending, and increased spending for the National Endowment for the Arts, Mars exploration, and Americorps. George Bush has yet to say "no" to Congress. The last veto occured more than 55 months ago, the longest period without a veto since the vetoless time between the presidencies of James K. Polk and Franklin Pierce. The last president to serve a full term and fail to veto any legislation was John Quincy Adams. George Bush's refusal to say "no" is a major reason why surpluses have become deficits and the federal government has grown by nearly 40 percent during his time in office. One needn't look far to find conflicts between traditional conservatism and Bushism, the most obvious being their antipodal dispositions toward the short but excellent word "no."

President Bush called for a $7 billion energy bill. Last week Congress gave him a $12 billion bill. President Bush called for a transportation bill that did not exceed $284 billion. Last week Congress gave him a $286 billion bill. Both pieces of wasteful legislation will receive George W. Bush's signature. Just three Republican senators voted against the spendthrift bills. One of those senators is John McCain, the man many conservatives have designated as in-house enemy number one. Does not this say more about conservatives than it does about John McCain?

McCain also voted against the most egregious, big-government bill during the Bush era, the prescription drug plan. He voted against the Farm Bill, which he called an "appalling breach of our federal spending responsibility." "The paradox of McCain's politics," noted a recent article in The Economist, "is that he frequently clashes with conservative activists not because he wants to advance liberal goals, but because he wants to promote conservative ones." So why do party conservatives despise McCain? Certainly it's not his support of campaign finance reform. If party conservatives can overlook President Bush signing it into law, then they can forgive the man who attached his name to the ugly legislation. A more plausible explanation is that John McCain opposed George Bush in the 2000 race for the White House, feels free to criticize Bush's foreign policy, and often votes against the worst of the Bush legislative agenda. What explains the animus toward John McCain on the Right? Too many conservatives mistake Bushism for conservatism.

Major League Baseball suspended Orioles first baseman Rafael Palmiero for violating its steroids policy. Palmeiro struggled at the plate after the steroid ban went into effect, suddenly regaining his earlier form more than a month into the season. Did poor performance spark Palmeiro to seek an anabolic edge? In March, Palmeiro told members of Congress: "I have never used steroids. Period. I don't know how to say it any more clearly than that. Never." Palmeiro recently collected his 3,000th hit, which normally guarantees entry into Baseball's Hall of Fame. The lone exclusion is baseball's most infamous degenerate gambler. If the doors to the Hall should close on otherwise qualified gamblers, should they also deny admittance to otherwise qualified cheaters?

President Bush has thus far refused to use his veto power. He has no such aversion to using another controversial executive power: the recess appointment. Despite Republicans controlling the Senate for two-thirds of his term, George W. Bush has made more recess appointments than his father (who had a Democrat Senate) and is on pace make more recess appointments than President Clinton (who faced a Republican Senate for six of eight years). George W. Bush issued his 106th recess appointment today, making John Bolton US ambassador to the United Nations. Just as the Constitution allows the obstructionism of the president's Senate opposition, the document allows, in Article II, Section 2, the president to make recess appointments.

A six-year, $286 billion transportation bill passed both houses of Congress last week. George W. Bush threatened to veto any transportation bill that exceeded $284 billion. But George Bush is the the president who just can't say no, so he now promises to sign the bill, which features a $5.8 million trail for snowmobilers in Vermont, $7 million for the National Infantry Museum, and a $200 million bridge named for Don Young, an Alaska Congressman who not surprisingly voted for the bill. After 54 months in office, President Bush has yet to wield his veto pen. His father vetoed 44 bills. President Reagan rejected 78. Franklin Roosevelt vetoed 635 bills. Not since the 1854 has there been so long a time without a vetoed bill. In the early years of the Republic, the infrequent brandishment of the veto pen might be explained by the infrequency of unconstitutional legislation. President Bush can rely on no such rationalization for his inability to tell Congress "no."